Known in the art are methods for the mechanical treatment of diamond with diamond powder deposited on a rapidly rotating or oscillating metal tool (cutting, grinding, boring), as well as the treatment with laser, or electron or iron beam (cutting and, mainly, boring). Known in the art is a method of making holes in diamond crystals using an oxygen jet at high temperature (cf. P. N. Kiseleva, Technical Diamonds (in Russian), M., Nedra Publishers, 1964, pp. 24-55; Zh. Bonrua, Diamond Cutting (in Russian, in Coll. of Art. "Synthetic Diamonds in Industry"), Kiev, Naukova Dumka Publishers, 1974, pp. 60-65).
There is also known a method of treating diamond by contacting it with a template at 600.degree. C. in an oxygen atmosphere. Diamond is treated by burning-out portions of diamond heated at the contact with a hotter template in oxygen.
A template is made of platinum, ceramic or such substances which withstand heating in oxygen atmosphere to a desired temperature (German Pat. No. 1,013,540).
According to the prior art method, diamond and template should be heated to different temperatures and should move relative to one another, which results in complications in the diamond treatment. During the treatment by the known method, in addition to most heated portions of the diamond which are to be dissolved, the dissolution of the adjacent slightly less heated portions is inevitable, which results in lower accuracy of diamond treatment.